Life in the 21st Century should be getting easier to manage, not harder.
Photo credit: Littledan77
The traditional image of the sun-bronzed, ‘no worries’ Australian has become more of a myth than a reality in the past few years. Instead, our working hours have increased in line with jobs being vacated but not filled and employers expecting overtime as the norm instead of the exception. All of which is leaving us with less time for home — but still working harder to pay for it — and virtually no time or energy for meaningful relationships, family, friends or hobbies.
For most people, the main source of relaxation is to slump on the sofa with wine, chips and bad TV for dinner — only to wake up the next morning with the remote control imprinted on our faces. The day starts again when we leave for work in the dark. Sound familiar to any of you?
This gloomy way of living and working has been examined by Clive Hamilton, Director of the Australia Institute, who found that if the average Aussie worked the same hours as the average worker in other industrialized nations, we would be able to take the rest of the year off from the 20th of November. When you consider that the average number of hours worked per week also includes part-time work — with Australia having the second highest proportion of part time workers in the world — the picture looks even worse.
Veering away from vacations
You would think, therefore, that we would all be desperately looking forward to having a holiday. But recent findings revealed that 58 per cent of full-time workers don’t use all of their leave entitlements each year. Why? Because they’re either ‘too busy’ at work, or can’t find a time to go away that suits them. This directly contradicts what Australians say are the most important things to them:
- Family and partners (60 per cent nominated this as their number one);
- Health (18 per cent)
- Work (2 per cent).
Leaving at five
In my interviews and research conducted for the book, Work/Life Balance for Dummies, I came across many stories from real blokes who were trying their hardest to ‘walk the talk’ and do their fair share at home, with the children and in the community. However, this is becoming more difficult when these same men sometimes have sole responsibility to providing an income for the household while their partners are raising children; plus they feel under pressure to move onwards and upwards in their chosen careers.
IT professional Mick found that after moving to Australia from London with his wife, Jo, and young baby, the long hours expected in his Australian workplace came as quite a shock. “The 50-hour plus week was pretty difficult,” he recalls. “If I left for home at five-o’clock I ended up doing what felt like ‘The Walk of Shame’ because everyone else was working such ridiculously long hours.” This attitude puzzled him: in a beautiful city with the ocean, vineyards, hills and beautiful weather, why were people feeling compelled to work until it was way past dark?
Finding a satisfactory solution
Mick thought it was time to reassess his priorities. Gardening had always been an interest and he joined the local Permaculture Club. He left his IT job and started helping a friend with his gardening business, but soon ended up with enough gardening clients of his own. “I’m on less than half of what I was earning in IT, but I’m much happier — no contest.” His wife works as an Occupational Therapist three days per week, and they have enough to pay their mortgage, raise their two daughters and enjoy a considerable amount of ‘life’ outside of their work commitments.
Mick has no regrets. “You have to ask yourself this question: how much money do I want? What else do I want out of life? We have a simple lifestyle and have already done our years of extensive (and childless) travel and aren’t really into fancy cars or eating out.” Mick explains further that his flexibility in working hours means that he has greater involvement in the girls’ school activities. “Because Jo is on set hours, it’s easier for me to drop them off and pick them up after school, which is great. There’s no way I would have been able to spend this valuable time with them if I’d stuck with my old job.”
Many people believe that work/life balance means a quieter life, working fewer hours and achieving a much clearer separation between work and your personal life. However this isn’t necessarily the full story. Most employees and self-employed people are willing to work hard in a job they enjoy as long as they have some control over where and when they work. Work/life balance really means having the freedom to leave work early to get a head start on the weekend traffic, or go to a medical appointment and being able to replace the lost hours on another day.
Scaling down might not be practical for everyone, but a bit of soul searching is essential for us all.
Technorati Tags: work/life balance, work life balance, long-hours culture, scaling down, making time for things beside work, freedom to leave work early, controlling working time
July 2nd, 2008 at 9:14 am
Hmmm… you must have some kind of government sponsored healthcare? Here in the states many people can’t do what your describing because of a lack of portable\affordable healthcare. Once you reach a certain age and have a few problems you find that insurance is either unavailable or costs way too much. So much of the U.S. works for insurance. Many companies won’t cover you unless you work 30-40 hours a week. I don’t think I would enjoy life much if I was rolling the dice on insurance. My wife had cancer and survived but it was over $500K dollars to get her through the treatment. If I had to pay I would be bankrupt.
July 2nd, 2008 at 11:56 pm
You’re correct, JC, we have ‘Medicare’ in Australia which is like the UK’s National Health system. That’s not to say, however, that it covers everything - there’s often lengthy waiting lists, over-crowding or poor facilities and privately-paid health insurance is actively encouraged by our government. Even then, there are invariably large ‘gaps’ to pay doctors, specialists and hospitals because they charge more than the insurance fund is prepared to pay.
What some of the ‘Five O’Clock Walk of Shame’ blokes told me is that they either pay for private health insurance or, in increasing cases, set up a regular ‘account’ and bank it themselves. This means they debit a certain amount each payday, deposit it into an interest-bearing account and thus having savings for any healthcare needs beyond the norm. Would something like that work for the average US worker?